Flying Adventure: Southern Angola – Day 11 (FNEsphinheira – FNMO):
After 3 nights in the amazing Iona National Park, it is time to move on. Our stop over destination for today is Mocamedes, about 200 km north of the park, and the capital city of Angola’s Namibe province.
After a hearty breakfast, we dismantle the camp and restore the place back to it’s unspoilt beauty. Our first leg, is driving back through the national park to the Espinheira base where our aircraft is parked.
As the saying goes; where you go down, you have to go up again. In this case, this means going up the steep sandy slopes from the river onto the park’s plateau. Gravity (for the correct science around the phenomenon of gravity read this article) helps you going down, it does not to go back up.
After a few attempts and a 1 bar tire pressure, we make it out of the extended bed of the river. For the next section to about half-way up, we aim for a rocky track for some better traction. That means re-inflating the tires. That being done we make it up the rocky climb, where we stop to deflate the tires gain for the final leg up to the top. It is during this stop when the hand-break of our support vehicle snaps, and the Land Cruiser has a free roll back down. Fortunately with nobody aboard.
Our tour guides from Angola Uncharted Safaris are not only masters of the terrain and cooking meat over the fire. They are also masters of vehicle recovery and mechanics. It’s definitely the type of crew you need when it gets a little rougher. And it sometimes does.
We manage to get the vehicle back onto its four tires again, but not to restart. Oil might have entered the cylinders during the hard impact, which could cause serious engine damage during a re-firing. As time moves on, we decide to travel with the main vehicle back to Espinheira for our onward journey, before the vehicle would return to tow the damaged one back to base.
Flight to Mocamedes
This incidence does however demonstrate, though in a slightly unpleasant way, how bloody tough these Toyota Land Cruisers are built. In this type of terrain, it’s definitely the vehicle of choice. Apart from a Jeep (fellow readers will know, a Jeep is his Cessna for the ground). So the lessons learnt are pretty straight forward:
- Get the right crew. That is people who know what they do where they do it.
- Get the right equipment for what you want to do and where you do it. Don’t be tempted to settle for the cheap stuff (see point 4 below).
- Place your vehicle into 1st gear when stopping in an incline. The gearbox is unlikely to snap.
- Always be prepared for the unplanned. It’s part of an adventure, and makes it adventurous.
Back at Espinheira we first have to re-fuel our aircraft. The guys from Angola Uncharted Safari shipped us a drum of Avgas all the way down from Luanda. That’s over 1000 km by road. It goes without further comment, that it is not the cheapest fuel. But if you want the real adventure, you sometimes have take a bullet. Today, has confirmed exactly that.
It is then a relatively short flight to Mocamedes. Despite some language challenges, the operators at the Welwitscha Mirabilis airport in Mocamedes where exceptionally friendly and helpful. The tower controller even gives us a lift to town and drops us in front of our hotel for the night. They don’t often get private flights to their airfield, so it’s been a special occasion for them it seems.
Mocamedes is a very nice, quiet and clean little city. An old colonial fishing town. The Chick Chik hotel is also very convenient to refresh after a few days in the bush and restock some basic supplies.
We then take a walk to the lovely beach front for a few cold beers and a snack. It’s a surprisingly pleasant stop-over destination.
